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21 Mar Mick Armstrong There is a long and proud history of rioting in Australia. It is a legitimate form of struggle that working class people and sections of the oppressed have resorted to time and again to defend their interests. Indeed, they have found them an exhilarating experience – a brief moment of libe...CONTINUE READING

11 Mar Diane Fieldes National identification is today taken for granted by virtually the whole of humanity. An underlying assumption is that such identification is natural and therefore of very long duration. Similarly, the idea of national borders and the need to police them is assumed to have a long history....CONTINUE READING

11 Mar Katie Wood Katie Wood talks to former tram conductor Doug Jordan about a long and bitter fight to save more than a thousand jobs in Melbourne’s public transport system. “The revolution began at dawn – it was the day the workers took over the trams. It was the day the connies put the bosses to flight,...CONTINUE READING

07 Mar Janey Stone International Women’s Day has become mainstream in recent years. But historically it was a socialist event. Clara Zetkin, a leading member of the German Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the early 1900s, argued that the working class would never win its battles without women and raised the...CONTINUE READING

17 Feb Mick Armstrong Union House, Melbourne University’s student union building, currently looks like a tenth rate shopping mall or food court. And that’s the way the powers that be would like it to stay. But in September 1971, Union House took on a dramatically different appearance. Hundreds of students were...CONTINUE READING

14 Feb Kim Doyle In the 1960s and ’70s, the illegal abortion industry was the basis for one of the most lucrative and enduring criminal rackets in Australian history. A million dollar police protection racket extorted money from doctors – some of whom mixed in prestigious social circles – who secretly perf...CONTINUE READING

14 FebLouise O’Shea, whose article ‘Marxism and Women’s Liberation’ appears in the latest Marxist Left Review , argues that Marxist analysis is central to the struggle for women’s liberation. When Canadian tennis player Genie Bouchard was asked who she would like to date, in a post-match intervi...CONTINUE READING

12 Feb Tom O’Lincoln Shane Bentley ( Red Flag , Issue 16) raises three important issues about the 1974-75 Portuguese revolution. The first is that I called the PRP the “most promising” far left group. Shane rightly identifies the PRP’s lack of a clear Leninist perspective as a serious weakness. But he still us...CONTINUE READING

12 Feb Louise O’Shea The Russian Revolution transformed the lives of women and struck a blow against sexism in a way no event before or after has done. The advances for women in the months following October 1917 – free abortion on demand, civil marriage, no-fault divorce, guaranteed state support for women wit...CONTINUE READING